Work Text:
12:30 PM
Summer is weird. Without it, there’s no indication of what day it is, or when things start and end. Days start to blur together - Monday is suddenly Friday and something happened all week, probably - well, now Norman understands why September always creeps up, grabs everyone’s ankles and drags them all back to school before anything can be done to make summer count.
Norman wonders if it’s like that for ghosts too, then gets out of bed and heads downstairs, wondering if this meal should be called lunch or breakfast or if brunch is better.
1:45 PM.
It isn’t brunch.
2:11 PM
Norman decides that a diary might be in order - not just to keep track of his own sense of time, but to see what it’s like for others too. Neil keeps peeking at what he’s trying to write, and Norman keeps pushing his face away with the rubber end of his pencil.
Neil’s being nosey. Nothing much to read in here anyway.
“I am not!” Neil protests, shortly before realising it’s somewhat damning evidence that he has, indeed, read what he shouldn’t have. “I’m just curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Norman replies absently, doodling more slime falling from the jaws of the zombie in the corner of his notebook. “And lots of other people too.”
2:30 PM
On cue, a very dazed and confused general wanders through Niel’s front room, obscured up to the waist by the floor. The ground here must have been lower before he died. He looks to Norman and waves, one eye swinging out of its socket as he does. Norman politely waves back. Neil makes no particular comment.
5:55 PM
Town library shut 5 minutes early, didn’t quite make it to do research. Should probably go home.
6:30 PM
At Aggie’s tree.
***
The sun wakes Norman up even though he’s face down in his pillow. It’s the heat on the back of his neck, the way the covers have trapped his feet so he can’t stick a leg out to cool down. Slowly roasting, mummified.
He turns his head and blinks at the clock, then pulls out his diary from under his pillow, yawning and squinting until his vision clears of sleep.
Tuesday July 20th 2013
Woke up. It’s too hot. Do mummies get trapped in their bandages and fall over while trying to get up?
“Norman!” his mother calls upstairs. “Norman, I’m going to the store, do you want anything? Are you even awake?”
“I’m awake!” he calls back, finally disentangling himself from the sheets. “Can you get ice cream?”
“No more of that, you’ll get fat! I’ll be back in an hour!” And then the front door slams. Jingling keys, car doors swooshing open and whamming shut again, before the deep grumble of the engine disappears into the silent summer morning. Norman falls back on his bed and screws his eyes shut.
10:20 AM
Mom goes shopping. Won’t get ice cream because she says I’ll get fat. Dad will probably buy some later anyway.
11:30 AM
Neil is out of town visiting his grandma for two days.
12:10 PM
At Aggie’s tree. Brought lunch.
This is a really dumb idea and he knows it. He doesn’t even have the excuse of Neil egging him on, or asking him a load of questions. It’s Norman’s own decision to sit here at the base of the tree in the middle of the forest, and stare at his pencil until it moves.
He thinks there’s a sort of fizzling green-yellow light around it, though it could just be dust motes in the air. It twitches, back and forth, like a worm caught on a dry sidewalk. One hand lifts up, but doesn’t touch it, hovering just above the surface of the paper. Like magnetism, the pencil shoots up and sticks to him.
The whole thing then splits in half.
2:14 PM
Came home and got new pencil. Not trying that again in a hurry.
***
Thursday, July 22, 2013
Neil’s back today.
11:20 AM
Neil’s sick from eating his grandma’s cooking and can’t hang out for very long. Chatted for an hour. Then he puked. Mitch said I should probably just go home.
12:10 PM
At Aggie’s tree.
He should have brought food with him today as well, but all he has in his backpack is a breakfast bar. Chewing helps Norman think for a little while, and he looks at the pencil resting on top of his diary again. It rises up, drops down, up again, spins in the air, drops down. Up, down, up, up, up. Stuck in the tree.
Norman sighs. “Sorry Aggie,” he says, climbing up the bent over old tree, finding useful handholds, feeling that the bark has been worn away in some and smiling. He’s not the first to climb this thing.
The branch he sits on to retrieve his pencil loses a few leaves when he jostles it. He watches them flutter towards the floor, and frowns. They stop. The book flies up towards him, and he checks his watch to note the time.
12:35 PM
Tree’d my pencil, stopped leaves falling. Getting better at this. Probably shouldn’t be.
5:47 PM
Dad bought ice cream. Called it.
6:10 PM
Watch is a few minutes slow? Have fixed it for now.
***
Norman wakes up to rocks hitting his window and Neil in the garden below, waving cheerfully though still looking a little on the pale side. Apologies aside, the two of them head into the town itself to locate some ice cream and maybe entertainment. Neil echoes Norman’s greetings to the ghosts on the way, oftentimes looking in completely the wrong direction.
“Did anything cool happen while I was gone?” he asks once they both have a Mr Whippy in hand. Norman licks ice cream off his lips and shakes his head.
“Nah, it was pretty boring,” he twirls the pencil between his fingers, back and forth, back and forth. “Did you figure out what made you sick?”
Neil groans and pauses in eating his ice cream. “With my grandma, it could be anything,” he uttered in a manner similar to those men in movies who had been to ‘Nam and seen way too much of the world. “But I think it might have actually been the jello. I mean, that’s what came back to haunt me first.” A pause. “Heheh, haunt.” He nudges Norman. The pencil falls from his fingers.
A blink, and it stops.
Oh crap, Neil is definitely going to notice that. Everyone’s going to notice that. They’re right in the middle of town and there’s no possible way anyone will let something this weird slide. He squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the inevitable yell of surprise from his friend.
… any second now...
He peeks them open, noting that the pencil is still hanging in the air with no indication of moving any time soon. His gaze moves up and sideways. Neil is licking his ice cream. There’s a melting blob of the stuff about to fall off the other side of the cone and onto his shoes. By all the laws of physics, it should be falling right now. But it doesn’t. Nor does Neil. Or the bird caught mid-flap above them, or the ice cream man counting out change, or the lady walking her dogs down the street behind them, or the car going past. It feels like maybe Norman’s heart has stopped, until he presses his hand against his chest and reassures himself.
He checks his watch. The second hand ticks neither forward nor backward.
“Is this...?”
He lets the pencil fall.
“Oh man,” Neil complains, looking down in irritation. “These are new shoes, come on.”
Norman tries not to let his emotions onto his face as he bends down to pick up the pencil with care. Maybe Neil won’t notice- “Hey, what’s up with you?” Never mind.
“What? Nothing, I just dropped my pencil.”
“You look pale dude,” Neil says, then backs away. “Oh crap, you’re not gonna hurl are you? What if I’m still contagious, I’m so sorry!”
***
stopped time.
3:00 PM
went home
3:12 PM
faceplant on bed
3:13 PM
start to panic
3:13 PM
panicked for 20 minutes, stopped panicking to realise panicking is a bad idea if doing it stops time
3:13 PM
I think I broke my watch.
3:45 PM
got the time off the computer instead.
4:10 PM
at Aggie’s tree.
4:17 PM
went home
That had been a pointless excursion. Even if Aggie were still there - which she isn’t and wasn’t, she moved on and was happy and he wouldn’t call her back for some stupid reason of his - she may not even have known how to do this thing that Norman was suddenly capable of. Then again, their powers aren’t very well defined, beyond vague terms like “medium” and “curses”. Manipulation of time seems a bit out there, though.
Telling Neil would be dumb. He’s a friend, of course, but what difference would it make if Neil knew that now Norman’s abilities extended to the crazy lengths that they did.
His head hits the desk at the same time as his computer helpfully reminds him that he has three new spam emails waiting for him in his inbox.
“What am I meant to do?” he asks the air. Not even a ghost sitting around listening to him, just emptiness. “Can’t there be a guide book or a support group or something for this stuff?”
Bawoop. Four new spam emails.
For lack of anything better to do, he opens them. Penis enlargement, free rolex watches, paranormal ICQ chatroom, $20 free poker bet.
One of these things is not like the others.
He squints at the screen in utter bafflement at the email. There’s no fancy flashing text or poorly misspelled attempts at English like the usual spam. Besides which the sender is a gmail address with an actually intelligible name - TwitchyWitchyGirl - and the email is addressed, not to his screen name ZomBeesBite, but to him.
Norman,
5.40pm EST - chatroom MysteryKids
Be there or be square
or bored. you’re probably already that, so you should come.
-- Coraline
That had to be a fake name - maybe a typo of Caroline. Who the heck would send him this with their real name? More to the point, how did they get his real name?
Don’t reply to junk mail, mom always said.
Well. Turning up in the chatroom wouldn’t necessarily be replying, would it?
[ZomBeesBite entered the chatroom MysteryKids at 5:36 PM]
PsychoNaught: called it, pay up
PiggyPine: uuuuuuuuuuugh u suck raz
AstralPyramid: why would you even bet against the psychic kid mabel
PiggyPine: i like a challenge
PsychoNaught: and I like money! so win-win i guess
ZomBeesBite: uh
TwitchyWitchyGirl: Will you guys stfu before you push him off the page geez!
TwitchyWitchyGirl: okay go ahead
ZomBeesBite: how did you get my email? and my name?
AstralPyramid: shenanigans
PiggyPine: i sensed a disturbance in the force and then the magic book we have did some weird stuff and then we called raz who did his psychic thing and he called cora and she emailed you and now here we are :D
TwitchyWitchyGirl: Thanks Mabel.
PiggyPine: ur welcome!
ZomBeesBite: ….......
ZomBeesBite: was there a reason for this or
PsychoNaught: there was a psyche crying out for help so we thought it would be good if we stepped up to the plate, basically
TwitchyWitchyGirl: we’re a paranormal activities group - we deal with ghosts and witches and weird things that happen that people prefer to ignore
TwitchyWitchyGirl: since it’s, you know, kinda lonely being the only kid who’s different
ZomBeesBite: do you
AstralPyramid: …......?
PsychoNaught: *drumroll plz*
[ZomBeesBite went idle at 5:52 PM]
TwitchyWitchyGirl: great, scared him off, good going guys
AstralPyramid: why are you blaming us when it was you who was talking before he went idle???
[ZomBeesBite returned at 5:56 PM]
ZomBeesBite: Sorry i had to think for a bit
PiggyPine: s’cool
ZomBeesBite: Are you all
ZomBeesBite: Do you all have powers? like, see ghosts and stuff?
PiggyPine: not all of us! dipper (that’s AstralPyramid fyi) and me just have a magic book thing
TwitchyWitchyGirl: i can see them, nothing much else though
PsychoNaught: I got the works, ghosts, levitation, diving into people’s minds - last thing’s my job basically and i’m pretty good at it
TwitchyWitchyGirl: Your ego can’t fit in the chat Raz it needs its own screenname
ZomBeesBite: is it
ZomBeesBite: Is it okay if i go and have another think for a bit?
PiggyPines: Nooooo we will ban you foreverrrrrrrrrr
TwitchyWitchyGirl: ignore her, sure go think i don’t have to go to bed for ages yet
PiggyPine: isn’t it like 11 in Oregon
TwitchyWitchyGirl: yup
ZomBeesBite: alright I’ll be right back
Breathe, Babcock, breathe.
They could be kidding. It could be a huge elaborate prank played by Alvin’s cronies, who apparently hadn’t taken the hint last year despite their leader’s somewhat unsettling change in allegiance. Maybe finding someone new to pick on was too much work for them.
Then again, this was all too elaborate. Why would they take the time and effort to make so many screen names? Did they even own computers with an old chat program like ICQ on it? No, this required brain power. Salma? Urgh, no, why would she bother? There’s no way she would be anything but straightforward to the point of bluntness as usual.
And so, Norman Babcock takes a deep breath, opens his diary, and writes.
6:07 PM
Made contact with Mystery Kids.